


daughter of sea and sword

by lorata



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 17:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11086521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata
Summary: (I'm gonna stand on my toes ripping stars down)In your first moments you are drowning, but don't let that stop you. You are Antiope, the second of the Amazons, and from your first breath life is a battle.





	daughter of sea and sword

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all guess who saw wonder woman and is rolling around in badass warrior lady feels
> 
> (I have no idea where this is going, if anywhere, but have this anyway)

In your first true memories, you are drowning.

You don’t realize you’re drowning at first, of course. That requires conscious awareness, and understanding of the natural and physical world; knowledge of the body’s demands for oxygen, the lungs for equalized pressure to stop them from collapsing in on themselves. Later you will understand drowning; later you will witness it in person, you will watch men sink beneath the churning waves and see their bodies float back up, limp and bobbing on the water. Later you will tremble at the horror of it, at the fragility of life, god and mankind and Amazon and everything in between, that something so complex, so beautiful, could be destroyed by the life-giving sea.

You will think upon those first hazy, dawning moments of your second life, of the cold, cold water and its hand around your chest, of the darkness and the shadows and the burning in your lungs, the distant light rippling far, far above your head, and you will be proud. You will remember that the Amazons were drowning even as they came to be, and you will love your sisters for the strength that carried you up, up the rolling deep until you broke the waves and gasped your first eternal breaths.

In the beginning, of course, you know nothing of this. You are a soul with a body formed of clay and mud and will, and the sea is cold and dark and deep. You do not have the words to describe it but you _feel_ , the pain and the fear and something greater: a raw, surging need to _fight_. And so you push off the bottom off the sea with clumsy feet, and you thrust with your arms and legs toward the light. The light is strange and frightening and beautiful all at once, and as the clay sloughs away and you see your fingers form, as the water around you turns from black to cobalt to aqua and the sunlight ripples on the surface above you, as your lungs burn and your vision sharpens and the roar of the waves reaches your ears, you know that whatever lay behind you, the light is what you seek.

Your head breaks the surface, your lungs expel the rough salt water and take in air, sweet and clean and beautiful. Your hands and knees touch sand and rock and bits of shell, slippery and sliding as the waves crash forward and back, pulling you with the force of the tide. You crawl to shore and see your sister standing there, hair a tangled mess about her shoulders and spilling down her back, smooth muscles in her arms as she flings her hands to the sky. She raises her face and she lets out a shout — of joy, of triumph, of defiance — _the water could not kill us, we stand and we live and so we are_ — and you feel it in your very gut. And so you stand, and you shout, and you reach across and snag her fingers with your own.

You stand in the surf as the water crashes around your ankles and the sand hisses as the waves pull back toward the sea. You hold your sister’s hand and watch as the others swim ashore, all of them different colours, different shapes, all of them women and all of them your kin. You feel a connection to them like scarlet thread, and as each one passes you and your sister lay hands — on their heads, their shoulders, their arms — you press your lips to theirs, to their cheeks and foreheads and the flutter of their eyelids, and your heart swells with pride and love.

You are Antiope of the Amazons, sister to Hippolyta and daughter of the sea and sword. You were born fighting. You will die fighting. And in between, you will make men bleed.


End file.
